St. Paisios: Wives Obey Your Husbands

Originally appeared at: 3rm.info

God wisely ordered everything. He endowed the man with some talents, the woman with others. He gave a man the courage to find a way out of difficult situations and for a woman to obey him. After all, if God had given the same courage to a woman, the family would not have been able to resist.

In Epirus (Epirus is a region in western Greece. - Translator's note) stories were told about one woman who was a thunderstorm for the entire area! She dressed in a long white shirt and always wore a scimitar (a scimitar is a large curved Turkish dagger) in her belt. The robbers took her with them on business! Imagine - a woman in a band of robbers!

One day she came to a remote village, located several hours on foot from her village, to take one Wallachian boy and marry him to her daughter. Since the guy began to fidget, she tied him up, put him on her shoulders and dragged him to her village! However, such cases are an exception to the rule. Try, draft women into the army and form a women's company out of them. And then take a dozen teenagers in scout uniforms and ask them to show themselves to the warriors from afar. Immediately the whole company will give a streak! They will think that the enemy is on the offensive!

The husband, says the Holy Scripture, “is the head of the wife” (Eph. 5:23). That is, God determined that the husband should rule over the wife. The wife’s authority over the husband is an insult to God. First, God created Adam, who said about the wife: “Behold.” now bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh” (Gen. 2:23).

A wife, the Gospel says, should fear her husband, that is, she should honor him. And the husband must love his wife (Eph. 5:33). There is respect in love. There is love in respect. What I love, I also honor. What I honor, I love. That is, love and respect are not different things: they are the same thing.

However, people shy away from this harmony of God and do not understand the meaning of the gospel words. So the husband, misinterpreting the Gospel, says to his wife: “You should be afraid of me!” You're an eccentric person, but if she was afraid of you, she wouldn't even marry you!

And some women say their own: “Why should a wife be afraid of her husband? No, I cannot accept this. What kind of religion is this? Discrimination!” But look what the Holy Scripture says: “The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom” (Prov. 1:7). The fear of God is respect for God, reverence, spiritual modesty. This fear puts you in awe, it is something sacred.

The equality with men that some women strive for can only be justified to a certain extent. Today, women work and vote on an equal basis with men. Therefore, they have become infected with some kind of unhealthy spirit and think that they are equal to men [in everything]. Of course, the souls of men and women are the same. But if the husband does not love his wife, and the wife does not honor her husband, then discord arises in the family. In the old days, it was considered a bad thing if a wife contradicted her husband.

And now an arrogant, cheeky spirit has appeared. How wonderful it was in those days! I knew one married couple. The husband was a short, nondescript little man, and the wife was tall, of heroic stature! She alone playfully unloaded a hundredweight of grain from the cart! One day, one worker - also a burly guy - began to pester her and she, grabbing him, threw him a few meters to the side, like a match! But if you could see what obedience this woman showed to her husband, how she honored him! This is how a family becomes strong and indestructible.
 
Otherwise it won't be able to resist.

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